Today’s first reading from Genesis tell us of our origins: God made man from the earth which He created. But man is not simply dust, not simply earth. You are not merely matter. Man is both body and soul together, not as two parts temporarily joined. Man is an embodied soul or an ensouled body. Our first father became a living being when God breathed into Adam’s face the breath of life.

And God gave to man all good things to eat. The whole world was God’s gift to His creature. God proclaimed everything a feast for him. He made from the man a woman, a wife, in whom to delight and with whom to enjoy the world and the fellowship together with and in the Blessed Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

But the fall into sin changed everything. It changed the character of this world. Animals became hostile to man. The earth grew thorns where vines once were. Man now gets his bread only with intense labor. He must sweat and bleed for his nourishment. And the man and his wife were divided from one another so that they sought to control and dominate each other. And their conception was filled with sorrow. Not only child bearing but child rearing became riddled with pain and loss. The first fruit of their bodies begat not a messiah but a murderer.

After many millennia, a virgin named Mary finally conceived and gave birth to that long awaited Messiah. He was of her flesh and so truly Man. But He was also begotten of the Father from eternity and thus truly God. When we speak of Jesus as the God-Man we are attempting to describe the great mystery that God has become incarnate, the Second Person of the Trinity assuming the human nature into His person, without ceasing to be truly God. This confession is exclusive to Christianity. No other religion on earth believes, teaches and confesses this mystery. Not even other monotheistic religions like Judaism or Islam. They are subtle lies of the Deceiver.

This great mystery - God in the flesh - leads to another. Why? Why does God become Man? And the answer is in the first words we hear Jesus speak in today’s Gospel: I have compassion on the multitude. With these words of Jesus we learn the heart of the only true God, His will and intention and disposition toward us. I have compassion on the multitude. This mass of humanity that has become corrupt, ruined, mortal, shipwrecked.

St Paul describes this in the beginning of today’s Epistle: I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. A literal translation of the Apostle Pauls word there is because of the sickness [or disease] of your flesh. The result of the fall is that man’s flesh has become weak, sick, diseased. Our bodies are mortal. Tiny bacteria, unseen by the human eye, can do horrible damage to our flesh. Cancerous tumors, invisible, can quickly ravage their host. But “flesh” in the New Testament often means something more than the skin on our bones. It refers to our human nature that is broken and hostile from our Creator’s intention. Instead of showing kindness to our neighbor, we are filled with anger. Instead of respecting a neighbor’s marriage, one man covets another’s wife. God’s name is used as a curse instead of in prayer. Our Reformation Confessions of Faith describe this condition with the Latin term concupiscence, an inherited contagion, a disease with which we are born.

A fundamental disease of the soul and sickness of the flesh, testifying to the deep separation between us and our Creator, is where a person’s will, mind, and spirit is overcome by anxiety about the body. This results in fearful questions: “What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? What will happen regarding my job, my house, the Director of the FBI, my health insurance, my retirement income?

We are all so easily overcome by these concerns. And they are real, valid concerns from a worldly perspective. But such concerns and anxiety ultimately betray a lack of fear, love, and trust in God as both Creator of the world and sustainer of the world and us His creatures. What does the Small Catechism say? “I believe that God has made me and all creatures, that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my sense, and still takes care of them.”

When all is going well, those words don't mean much. But when we are on the verge of losing everything that is when the true confession of these words is tested. Can a blind man say, “God has given my my eyes?” What does a solider who has lost his leg think when he says, “God has given my all my members and still takes care of them?”

The Catechism continues: “He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.” Yet here is this crowd, listening to Jesus preach for three straight days. The food they have brought with them has run out. They cannot make it back.

This has happened before. Moses led the children of Israel through the Red Sea on dry ground, but life in the desert on the other side of the sea was not easy. That crowd grumbled and moaned, “You have brought us into this wilderness to die!” They longed to go back, to become slaves again, for at least in slavery there was food.

What is astonishing is that there is no similar report about the crowd following Jesus in today’s Gospel. They have run out of food, with not even enough remaining to get back home. They will die in this wilderness. From every external observation, we would have to call them fools. Fools to follow this Jesus and not put their material priorities first. We too are fools. Fools to be here on Sunday morning. Wasting our time on ancient liturgical mumbo-jumbo. Fools to take a wafer and call it the Body of Christ. Fools to pray to a God we have not seen.But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty. The base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should boast in His presence. But by Him you are in Christ Jesus who became for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. As it is written, Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord (1 Cor 1:27-31).

What does the world obtain with its wisdom? Slavery to sin, leading to death. But this foolish message, following Jesus to His Cross, confessing your sins and gazing upon the corpse of the God-Man hanging on a tree, Himself made to be sin and a curse - where does that “foolishness” lead? To Resurrection and Everlasting Life!

So then, He who created the world ex nihilo, from nothing, by His Word, He who fashioned man from the dust and breathed into His face the breath of life, He who caused water to spring from the rock and fed the people with manna and quail in the wilderness, can He not also feed this people who have followed Jesus to the brink of death?

The order goes out: Take your seat on the earth and prepare to be fed. And these people, “strengthened by what they had heard, obeyed and sat at Christ’s empty table” (Walther). Taking bread, He gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and the disciples to the crowd. Seven loaves, the number of creation, for four thousand people: the number of the four winds, the Gentiles, each a thousand, a number of great fulness, gathered into seven baskets, again demonstrating the Creator, for God rested on the seventh day.

All this Jesus did to signify that as He fed the five thousand - five, the number of the Jews, for there are five books of Moses - with five loaves, and gathered the fragments into twelve baskets, one for each tribe of Israel, so He is not by the feeding of the four thousand bringing the Gentiles under the umbrella of His mercy, so that all, both Jews and Gentiles, might return to their Creator and be saved. It is written, He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one, that He might create in Himself one new man inlace of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us to God in one body through the Cross, thereby killing the hostility (Eph 2:14-16).

And interesting to note with the Gentiles, though they are less in number than the Jews, they have less remaining afterward. Only seven baskets compared to twelve. What does this mean when you have less people, but less leftovers? They were hungrier! They followed Jesus out into the wilderness, out to certain death, hanging on His every Word, because they hungered and thirsted for righteousness!

Now just as we are sent out from the liturgy with a prayer that we would be strengthened in faith towards God and fervent love for one another, so these people are sent back to their homes, to be disciples of Jesus in their vocations, to live as Christians in their work of being husband and wife, father and mother, child and citizen, accountant and pilot and teacher and craftsman. Thus one of the great fathers of early American Lutheranism, C.F.W. Walther, said this about today’s lessons: “If a person truly wants to be a Christian, he must always fight against sin, watch and pray, and strive after sanctification.” (Walther, God Grant It, p599)

Sanctification comes from the Latin word Sanctus, meaning “holy.” Sanctification means “holy-fication,” becoming holy. Because of that sinful contagion creeping in our minds and bodies, there is much about us that is not holy: the lusts and evil desires that plague us, the wicked words that form in our minds and sometimes burst out, aimed at those whom we should love the most. Do you truly want to be a Christian? Then take those words of Walther to heart: You “must always fight against sin, watch and pray, and strive after sanctification.”

This is not how you become a Christian or earn your salvation, for you can never do that by your own power. But by the power of the Holy Spirit, working through His means of the Gospel and the Sacraments, the slavery to sin that in the past has plagued you has now been broken; thus St. Paul in today’s reading from Romans says that the one who is set free from sin and has become a slave to God receives fruit that leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

The pattern our Small Catechism lays out in the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer is entirely consistent with Scripture: Repentance, Faith, Holy Living. That is the pattern of the Christian life: Repentance, Faith, Holy Living. Sanctification is Holy Living, and as that father in the faith, Walther, told us above, we are to strive after sanctification.

So when you are afraid of your sins, repent and run to the Creed, run to Confession, which is running back to your baptism, and rejoice in the Faith, the good news of what God in Christ has done for you. And having received that salvation, “fight against sin, watch and pray, and strive after sanctification,” holy living.

But the Catechism does not stop there. It moves on the Sacraments. As do you. From the drowning anew in baptismal repentance to the absolution to the Sacrament of the Altar. Here you receive the Bread that is the Body of Christ, earned by His blood and sweat, the labor of His nail scarred hands. Come, dear Christian, receive the free gift of God: forgiveness of sins, and where there is forgiveness of sins, there is life and salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Unless your righteousness abounds more greatly that the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will certainly not enter into the kingdom of heaven. The Lord Jesus here tells us the standard by which we will be judged: not what your neighbors think about you, not what your family thinks about you, not what your country things about you, not even what your church thinks about you or what you think about yourself. Did you keep the commandments? Then you will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Did you break one commandment, even the littlest, the least of the commandments? Then, when the kingdom of heaven is ushered in, you will be called the least.

This righteousness is very different from what we call civil righteousness. Not in quantity, but in quality. You don’t have to be a Christian to be a good person in the world. Pay your taxes, drive courteously, give money to charity, serve your country, be helpful, don’t tell lies. Some people are nicer than others. They do more for society than others. Quite shamefully, many such people aren’t Christians while the Christians sit quietly on the sidelines. But this is the stuff of creation, of the First Article of the Creed, and what the Small Catechism calls the first use of the Law, the curb.

But that’s not what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel lesson when He talks about your righteousness. He’s not talking about how well behaved you are in the world; something the scribes and Pharisees had in spades. Your righteousness needs to abound even more greatly than theirs.

Jesus is talking about something much deeper than charity and community service. He’s concerned about the condition of your heart before God. This is the righteousness that not only does not murder, but never even gets angry. Have you ever been critical of what other people are doing, saying? Do you see somebody on the news, on Twitter or Facebook, and say, “What a fool!”? The righteousness that God requires is the perfect righteousness of the heart. And the standard declares: Whoever says, “You fool!” will be liable to the hell of fire.

Is your memory filled with such incidents? The times when you’ve called someone a fool and the times when they’ve said it to you? These memories burn through our soul worse than the acid burns in your belly. Memories of sin haunt us. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks about the spiritual power of memories to accuse us. If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift.

The initial context here are the sacrifices of the Jerusalem Temple under the old covenant. Now a great mistake often made is looking at these sacrifices as human work to appease God. As divine imperatives kept to earn His favor. This is not entirely accurate. God does require the shedding of blood for the payment of sins, as the Epistle to the Hebrews acknowledges: Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:22). But a comprehensive look at God’s Word reveals that God Himself rescued His people from slavery. God Himself brought them into the land of Israel. God Himself gave them the animals for sacrifice. Only consider the Old Testament reading from today. The Decalogue does not actually begin with the First Commandment, You shall have no other gods, as an imperative command. Rather, it begins: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You will have no other gods before Me. Its hard to hear in the nuance of the English, but this is not only an imperative, a command, but is also an indicative, a declaration.

The ten plagues, the Passover, the Exodus, the drowning of Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, these are all prologue to the Decalogue, the Ten Words or Commandments of God. He rescued them. He saved them. He is their God. They are His people. And as His people, this is how they ought to live. They bring animals to the Temple for sacrifice, along with other offerings at particular occasions, such as thanksgiving for recovery from sickness or at the birth of a child. These sacrifices of prayer and praise and thanksgiving we in response to the loving kindness and salvific action of the Lord their God. See the difference?

Now here’s the amazing thing: instead of consuming the offering on the altar, God turns around and gives it back to the people to eat, along with a portion for the priest. In this sacred meal, often of grilled meat, bread, and wine, God declared His peace, that He was reconciled with His people.

This is the initial context. You’ve probably already guessed at the secondary application. Already in the Church at the time of Matthew’s writing this text was understood in relation to the Eucharist. Consider this passage from an Early Church catechism called the Didache: And on the Lord’s own day, gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, confess your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may be not be defiled” (14:2).

Here’s the important application: you cannot be at peace with God while in a state of hostility with your neighbor. That’s why Jesus says, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come offer your gift. If you aren’t reconciled to your neighbor, there is no reconciliation between you and God. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all (Rm 12:18).

Yet such has not been the case. Sins hang in the memory. Sins that we’ve committed and sins that others have committed against us.

There’s only one way to deal with them, you heard it in the Didache: confession. If possible, confess to the person you’ve wronged. Ask for peace. Be reconciled. And if you’re the one who has been wronged, offer peace, sincerely. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:17-18). As long as those sins hang in the memory, they work like a cancer, making you more bitter and less holy. So do it quickly. Jesus says, without delay. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

It’s better to settle out of court than go to trial. That’s good practical advice. But like the greater righteousness, something more is at work here. God is the Judge and you don’t want your case turned over to Him on the basis of merits. There is no good news here in the instruction of Jesus. Antinomians beware. We stand at the foot of the mount, like Israel before Sinai, and tremble in fear. Our righteousness is never good enough before God. That’s why it’s important to little to the Sermon on the Mount - the 5th, 6th, and 7th chapters of Matthew - with these introductory words in your ears: Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. The righteousness that the Father demands, the Son fulfills. The indicatives of the Law describes the perfect righteousness of Jesus.

We can even break this down into two forms of righteousness. Jesus has an active righteousness, where He does everything the Law requires: Jesus alone, among all men, loves God with all of His heart, soul, mind and strength; and Jesus alone among men loves His neighbor as Himself. That’s His active righteousness. Jesus keeps the commandments. He is the One called great in the kingdom of heaven.

But in addition to this active righteousness of Jesus He has a passive righteousness, where He suffers and endures every punishment of the Law that you and I deserve. So the demand of the Law is settled and the adversary will not deliver you to the Judge, for Jesus has already been delivered to the Judge for you. It is written, In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses again them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. For our sake He made Him to be Sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:19, 21).

Now we, who have come here to the Divine Service are indeed divinely served; that is, God in Christ serves us. Our righteousness before God is passive righteousness. We receive His mercy freely, without any merit or worthiness in us. You share passively in the death defying death of Jesus Christ your righteousness through Holy Baptism. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death.

But it doesn’t stop there. The righteousness we passively receive from the Father by faith in His Son is lived out by the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, as we, are raised with Him to walk in newness of life, with a new kind of righteousness. This new righteousness of the disciples of Jesus is a busy inductive thing, rejoicing to be a loving husband, a submissive wife, a dutiful citizen, an obedient children, a caring parent, and on and on according to your vocations.

The Christian doesn’t do good things under the threat of the Law, but precisely because the threat of the Law has been removed. The first Psalm leads the way: in Christ you are fruitful trees planted by the streams of Baptism and delight in the Law of the Lord and mediate on it day and night. The new desire rising up in the Christian says, “I will no longer call my neighbor a fool. I will no more look at my neighbor’s wife with longing. I will no more bicker about my spouse. I want to be merciful as my Father in heaven is merciful.”

Because we always have the Old Adam in us there will be great struggle. Daily drown him anew in baptismal repentance and forgiveness. Return again and again to the Altar of our Lord’s Reconciliation to receive the gift of His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins in order that you may return again and again to your neighbor for reconciliation. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The crowds that pressed in on our Lord, nearly pushing Him into the Sea of Galilee (the Lake of Gennesaret), were not looking for a miracle. They didn’t throng to Him in search of free bread and fishes, as though Jesus were some traveling buffet. The came to hear the Word of God. That is technical language. That is St Luke’s way of signaling to the readers that this crowd were catechumens, they are hearers of the Word.

And it is not enough merely to hear the Word, but as Jesus stresses in the Sermon on Plain, from which you heard last week, also to “do” it or “keep” the Word. That is, to hold it fast in an honest and good heart and produce fruits of faith, to cling to it in the face of all danger, to look to God and His Word for all good, to forsake everything for Christ and His Gospel. This is what it means to be a Christian. To be a hearer and a doer of the Word. To hear means to believe.

Now as these catechumens chase after Jesus, seeking catechesis, hungering and thirsting for the Word, backing Him into the Sea, our Lord spots two boats, vacated on the shore after a night of fishing. Simon, James, John, their father Zebedee, and other crewmen were out of them, washing their empty nets. It was the usual end to a night of fishing, though this time they had caught nothing. They came up empty handed. But it’s not as if Mama Zebedee is at home frying up some chicken. No fish means no income today and no supper tonight.

You see these brothers weren’t just having a good time on the water, kicking back with a few beers. This was labor. Eating bread - or fish - by the sweat of their faces until they died. As the soil was cursed for Adam and turned up thorns and thistles, so was the sea for Simon. Even as it is for you. Sometimes employers downsize. Sometimes the commission doesn’t come in. Sometimes nets turn up empty. They toiled all night, laboring through the darkness. When others were sleeping comfortably at home Simon, James and John were spending their sweat in vain on the water. Now they wash their nets in silence.

But the night is over. The Dawn has appeared in Galilee. From this moment on Peter and the disciples will live in the Light where the fishing is good because they abide in the presence of Christ, the Light of the World.

The Psalmist prays, Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning (Ps 30:5). And this is how it was for Peter, not only here, but at the end of the Gospel, at the end of our Lord’s earthly life. The Gospels are sort of read in reverse. To understand the beginning you have to know the end.

Recall how after His arrest Jesus was taken to the high priest’s house. John gets Peter in the door because he was known to the servant. As Simon stood warming himself by the fire, the servant girl saw his face in the dim light. But Peter is in darkness, not only of the night, but of his own doubts and fears. He denies our Lord. Three times. When the rooster crows, signaling the beginning of the day, the Lord turns and looks at Peter - only St Luke reports this - and the light of the new day, through the look of Jesus, enlightens and calls Peter who repents with weeping. When is it fully day - after the resurrection - Peter’s restoration is complete when he sees the empty tomb and at some unknown point the risen Lord appears to Him (Lk 24:34). And he, along with James, John, and the Twelve, as sent to be fishers of men. This all began on the boat on the Sea of Galilee.

On the boat. Where first our Lord Jesus teaches. The preaching of Jesus comes first, it always does. Whether from the bow of the boat or from the pulpit in the nave. Everything that happens subsequently is a result of the Word. The crowds gather to hear the Word of Jesus. From the crowds emerge the disciples, as hearers of the Word. At the Word of Jesus Simon pushes away his boat from shore. He sits in the stern, feet from Jesus, listening to His Word. At the end of the sermon Jesus turns to Simon, Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. Though it is foolishness and stumbling, at the Word of Jesus, Simon drops the nets. And at the Word of Jesus, the Lord of all creation, the fish swim into the nets, so many that they begin to break. They signal to James and John to help. And two boats, once empty, are now filled with fish. And Jesus. Jesus is in the boat.

This entire text is moving toward Jesus’ commissioning of Peter to be a “catcher of men alive.” But first the miracle. Our Lord provides fish where there were no fish. He who gives seed to the sower and bread to the enter, sends forth His Word and fills nets and the boats. Jesus cares for the bodily needs of men. His delight, as you are taught to pray, is not in the strength of the horse of the legs of a man. The Lord delights in those who fear Him, who put their hope in His unfailing love (Ps 147:9-11). He provides for their bodily needs.

But more than that, He provides for their spiritual needs. The miracle is about the Church and how the Church comes into existence through preaching. The sea is the world. The fish are people. The net is the preaching of the Gospel and the boat is the Church. Luther preached on this text. He said, We have taken refuge in the net of the Church. We are the people pressing upon Christ to hear the Word of God; we are drawn from the sea of the world when the Lord became “my Light and my Salvation.” This was done first through Holy Baptism and is also done in Holy Communion. We are to leave everything and follow Him. The holy Gospel is truly a glad message. The storm may howl round about us; bodily suffering, war, human weakness, rebellious will, all surround the Kingdom of God. All human effort seems to accomplish little. Yet Christ lives in His Church. In faith we venture out into the deep. Christ will fill the net of His Church. It seems that the Church works in vain, but in reality and unknown to the senses a great shoal of shies is enclosed.

Simon, James and John had toiled in vain. Now our Lord and His Word gives success. Elijah thought all his zeal was in vain, for he was all alone, but the Lord left seven thousand in Israel who had not apostatized A small, but faithful number, strengthened in the might of the Lord and His Word.

It is no different for you. Or for us. It may seem as if its all in vain. We reach out, we show mercy, we share the Gospel with little success. But the Lord and His Word shall prevail. Truly His Church is filled. You are not alone. The wisdom of the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is foolishness to the world, but it is by the preaching of this Word that you are gathered into the net of His Church and are given life.

Do not fear, little ones. Jesus is in the Boat. Simon Peter, in his sin, wants Jesus to leave. Frightened by our own sinfulness, our own doubt and despair, our own foolishness and worldly wisdom, terrified by our conscience and plagued by our guilt over our vain attempts at self-satisfaction and success, we too want Jesus to leave us alone.

But He does not. He will not. He who provides fish and daily bread also provides the forgiveness of sins. He calls you to Himself in love; sometimes dragging you in the net of His Gospel Word. But always catching you alive. He takes you out of chaos and turmoil of the sea of this world and brings you safely into the Boat of His Church. Here, you don’t flop around, but rather swim in your baptismal waters as the little fishes of Jesus. Here He calls you to throw overboard all your sins and selfish desires, to become new and different men and women in heart and mind. To drown your lusts and appetites and passions in the sea of Holy Baptism, and emerge daily to live before Him in righteousness and purity. In short, to leave everything and follow Jesus as a hearer and doer of His Word.

Years later, when Peter was casting wide the net of the Word, he wrote to the Church concerning another boat. By inspiration of the Spirit, the apostle wrote: For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit, in which He went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Pt 3:18-21).

Peter has in mind not only Noah’s Ark, but the Ark of Jesus’ own body, into which you have been baptized and are ferried across death’s raging flood. Do not be alarmed on account of your unworthiness and sins, but receive the bounty of the Lord’s comfort and grace. For He gives you daily bread and forgiveness in abundance. And at His Word He shall give you Bread that is His Body for the forgiveness of all of your sins. Fall on your knees and receive from His hand. And remain with Him in the boat of His Church, hearing His Word, for He shall see you safely to the eternal shore of your heavenly home where you shall want to nothing, but have everything in Him.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen,

Let’s be clear. The Law always accuses. Shout it with fury and it crushes like a hammer to the rocks. Deliver it with a smile and it still stings the heart. Anyway you slice it the Law always accuses.

When Christ Jesus, the Lord of the Law, preaches His Sermon on the Plain, St Luke’s counterpart to St Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, He preaches it to His Church, that is, to His disciples, His catechumens, His hearers of His Word. This is not for masses or the unbelievers. This is for you. And He is not delivering the Law with a smile nor is He thundering it from the mountain, but it still accuses. The Law always does.

Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned. And we are judged and condemned already for we constantly judge and condemn others. And not just those we know. We judge the abstract idea of those who have ended up in desperate need and show up at the church door looking for help. We judge their decisions, their motives, and we condemn all their poor choices. We condemn them. And so we stand condemned.

Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. We hang on to grudges almost as tightly as we hang on to our mammon. We neither freely forgive nor do we freely give. We are like the servant who was forgiven an enormous debt by his master and goes out and starts choking the fellow servant who owed him a hundred bucks. Our unwillingness to forgive displays a lack of trust in the full and free forgiveness of all our sins by the mercy of the Father. Our unwillingness to give betrays a deep seeded greed that refuses to believe that everything we have, everything in this life is gift from a merciful Father.

The Law accuses us and we are accused. The Law condemns us and we are condemned. There is nowhere to hide, without or within. The world and the devil attack us from without, hurling all manner of temptation and immorality at us. Attempting to seduce and confound us. What’s worse, is they have a willingly ally in our flesh, which conflicts and attacks us from within. This type spiritual affliction is even worse. Our own conscience is terrified and tortured. We know that we have failed. By the work of the Law the beam in our own two eyes has become painfully obvious. Where do we turn in our blindness?

Repentance is needed. Daily repentance. This is the constantly necessarily work of the Law in the life of the Christian. It is the work of God’s Spirit in His Law as He works on and in His Christians. This is the warp and woof of the Christian life: repentance and faith; contrition and absolution.

And that’s what we have been doing these past few weeks since Trinity Sunday - hearing and learning from the Gospel of St Luke what it means to be a Christian, how we are to believe and behave. You heard it first in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The point there: listen, heed the Word of the Lord, cling to it for dear life and the source of all good in this life and the life of the world to come. Then the parable of the Great Banquet and the nature of the Kingdom of God; the extravagant mercy of the Lord of the House to invite the poor and outcast and dejected to His banquet. Even St Mary, last Sunday, taught us of the Lord’s mercy upon the meek and lowly and how one ought to receive the Word of God in the humility of faith and the poverty of spirit. And you see it today exemplified in Joseph.

For the Kingdom of God is not like a wrathful and vindictive Lawgiver who condemns His whole creation to Hell. Though He would be justified in doing so. Rather the Kingdom of God is like a merciful Father lavishing His grace and love upon His fallen children; raising them up to Himself in peace and righteousness, bestowing upon them new and splendid identities as His adopted sons and daughters, Christians after His own heart, marked with His Holy Triune Name.

The merciful Kingdom of God is seen in the faithful Father, true fountain ever flowing, bestowing the perfect Gift of His own dear Son, to be born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons (Gal 4:4-5). The Son has opened your blind eyes by removing the two beams - one from each eye - and lashing them together into the cruciform instrument of His all atoning sacrifice for you.

You are His sons and heirs. You may have been sold into the slavery of sin, but you do not rightly belong to that wicked Pharaoh the devil. You are sons and daughters of your merciful Father in heaven. Become merciful, even as your Father is merciful. For this is your true identity as rightful heirs of the Kingdom. He is your God. You are His people. A people after His own heart, created by Him in the beginning and recreated by Him in the image of His own beloved Son, who is not only the Lord of the Law, but the Fulfillment of the Law.

For those imperatives of the Law that accuse you: judge not, condemn not, give, forgive. Are also indicatives that describe Christ Jesus. He did not judge or condemn. He freely and completely forgave those who sinned against Him. Jesus gave all that He had, down to the last drop of His own precious blood, as a ransom for the world.

And precisely because you, dear Christians, share in His baptismal everlasting life you become merciful, even as your Father is merciful. His Father is your Father. As He is, so shall you be. As He was in this life, so you are now. Delight in the Law of the Lord in which you are blessed. It may accuse and condemn your old Adam, but it is the true and perfect, holy and beautiful Word and will of your heavenly Father who loves you in mercy. Study it. Meditate upon it. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. Keep it before your eyes. Set it before your children in love.

For though the Law always accuses. The Law does not only accuse. It also guides. It instructs and informs your life of fervent love toward your neighbor. You are saved and redeemed by the precious blood of Christ alone. By the One who was sold into the Egypt of your sin, who was strung up on the evil Cross, but which God meant for good as the way to keep alive you and your little ones. He saved you. Christ alone. He did not save you from the Law, but for the Law. You are placed, by the good and wise Law of the Lord into your various vocations: father, mother, son, daughter, husband, wife, or worker. There you are called to bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Repay no one eve for evil. In short, to become merciful, even as your Father in heaven is merciful. To do as Joseph did: forgive those who sin against you.

For you have been freely and fully forgiven of all your sins in the shed blood of Christ, who suffered for you, in your place, the full penalty of the Law on your behalf. He was accused for you. By faith in Him you are set at liberty; made free to live in the love of Christ for the good of your neighbor. For you are His child and catechumen. He your Father and Teacher. He measured out the full righteousness of the Law, pressed it down, shook it together, and pours it over in abundance upon you. This is how He measures toward you. Without measure. In super abundance. This then is the way of righteousness and generous measurement He exhorts for the sake of your brethren.

Do not be fearful of your sins, dear Christians, come forward to your Joseph, Jesus Christ, who is not only in the place of God, but is God; for He is here in forgiveness and mercy, in blessing and love. He speaks kindly to you and comforts you. He provides for you and your little ones. You are not His enemy. You are hungry, so He feeds you. You are thirsty, so He gives you to drink. His own Body and Blood, the very incarnate mercy of your Father, the superabundance of His grace, measured to you.

In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christmas hymns in July? No, it’s not the half-birthday of Jesus. Rather, with overflowing joy, the Church of God in Christ Jesus, today celebrates the Feast of the Visitation of our Lord.

St Luke’s Gospel, that ordered account of the life and ministry of our Lord according to the very eye-witness testimony of key disciples, records for us in the first chapter the visit of St Mary to her kinswoman, St Elizabeth. The joyful meeting of these two miraculously expectant mothers - St Elizabeth in her sixth month with the Baptizer, the Forerunner of the Messiah, St Mary herself newly with Child, only but a few days - this is not the visitation to which we refer and gives thanks this day. This is the first meeting of St John the Baptist and the Lord whom he was to serve.

St Mary, having just received the astounding good news from the Archangel Gabriel, sets out over hill and dale to the home of her cousin St Elizabeth. In a journey reminiscent of the Ark of the Covenant when it was returned to Jerusalem by King David from Obededom’s house after he had received back it from the Philistines, St Mary, bearing in her womb the embryonic presence of YHWH Sabaoth, bounds over the hills of Judea to bring blessing to the house of Zechariah the priest and his wife.

From within the house, Elizabeth hears the greeting of her kinswoman and yet another miracle happens: the child within her εσκιρτησεν, skips, for joy! The pre-born Forerunner faithfully acknowledges the presence of the Greater One, though He is only centimeters in size and possibly not has not even implanted into the uterus of His Virgin Mother. Even so, He is already, from the moment of conception, like all pre-born babies, fully Man.

Elizabeth is herself filled with the Spirit and speaks, greeting St Mary nearly in song, Blessed are you among women and blessed is the Fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?

It was a fearful secret St Mary had been carrying; not yet known to St Joseph, her bethroned, nor to any other, but only to herself. But she realizes from the look of astonishment on Elizabeth’s face that she, too, was in the know. God has let Elizabeth in on the great mystery of the ages: her kinswoman, St Mary, is the Theotokos, the Mother of God. For this, the unwed Virgin Mother is blessed. She has found favor with God.

Perhaps giving a furtive glance over at her husband, Zechariah, sitting silently in the corner - silent since he had doubted the words of Gabriel - her her next words seem aimed at him: And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. You can almost see Zechariah laughing silently in agreement. Yep, he hadn’t believed it. Yet here it is: his aged barren wife, pregnant, gospelling (not gossiping) with her unwed, teenage, pregnant Virgin cousin. A visit for the ages.

Zechariah and Elizabeth received St Mary, the first Christian woman, in genuine love and hospitality, contributing to her needs and she to theirs. For the Blessed Virgin, blessed among all women, the Bearer of God, spent the next three months doing housework and helping prepare the layette for St John. In her faithful humility, the Mother of our Lord did not consider herself above her vocation of wife and mother, cousin and friend. They rejoiced with her even as she herself rejoiced.

For the young St May herself melts into a song of praise that is reminiscent of Hannah’s hymn in 1 Samuel 2, portions of which you sang in the Introit this morning. My heart exults in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in Your salvation. Quite interesting to note: the Hebrew word of ‘salvation’ is yeshua. Jesus. When you read or hear the word ‘salvation’ in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and Canticles, you ought to hear Jesus. Such as the song of Moses: The Lord is my strength and my song and He has become my salvation; my yeshua, my Jesus. For He will save His people from their sins.

St Mary recognizes, in faith, this connection and fulfillment when she sings: My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. She calls her unborn Son, only days from conception by the Holy Spirit, her Savior. St Luke is the only evangelist to use this noun of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only one. He heard it from the Song of St Mary.

We call her song her Magnificat, from the first words of the song in Latin. In it she praises God for His kind regard of her, a lowly handmaiden and servant of the Lord. She praises His upside-down way of working where He fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away, lifts up the lowly and tumbles the mighty from their thrones. Above all, she rejoices in how the fruit of her womb, the Child whose heart now beats beneath her own, is the very fulfillment of God’s great promise to Abraham about the Seed who would come to bring blessing to all. “In all of this,” Luther says, “we regard not her humility but God’s regard to be praised.”

For He stoops down, taking up flesh, receiving His humanity from His poor Virgin Mother, in order to raise the poor and lowly from the dust. In mercy the Mighty One stretches out His arm and in a strength made perfect in weakness, allows His hands to be pierced and bleed for you. But first He must grow His arms and feet and body.

This you confess when you, along with all the Church, when you sing St Mary’s Son in Vespers or Evening Prayer, or even this morning. You confess that you are poor and lowly, undeserving of the Lord’s loving kindness and mercy. That you are not a virgin, pure and chaste, but have given yourself over to the depravity of sin and are soiled with it in thought, word, and deed.

But in faith you believe that He who has done great things for Israel, has come forth as a Branch from Jesse’s stump, bearing righteous fruit. He judges you not by what you see, but by what He has done and by what you believe and hold fast. For He has marked you with His holy Name in your baptismal birth. He has toppled the mighty rulers of sin and death and the devil from the throne of your heart and has set Himself alone there. He fills you, hungry and thirsty for righteousness with the good things of His wholesome Word of forgiveness, with His Body and Blood.

He does not send you empty away, but makes you rich in the eternal riches of His heavenly kingdom, so that you might overflow in love and honor and hospitality and prayer. He has remembered His mercy and in remembering He saves you in love so that you may stay with Him forever and at the last return to your eternal home, together with God the Father in the fellowship + of the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory now and unto the ages. Amen.